Fine dining at SF State

On the fourth floor of the new Burk Hall Annex, behind two plain wooden doors, is a place that could change the way faculty and students eat their lunch.

No more standing in line, holding a wet plastic tray and waiting for food placed on paper plates. Now you can dine in a real restaurant, where the napkins are made out of cloth and an actual waiter serves you.

For only $7 you can get a three-course meal and a beverage at the Vista Room, a fine-dining restaurant which opened Nov. 14.

The restaurant, run by the departments of hospitality management and consumer and family studies/ dietetics, is a teaching and learning laboratory where students are expected to run a real-life restaurant.

Students do all the food preparation, dishwashing, serving and, with the help of a chef, come up with a weekly menu.

"You gain practical experience that you can only get from being behind the lines putting out the product," said Phillip Hughes, a senior majoring in restaurant management. "Owning a restaurant is my goal someday, and this gives me an opportunity to see how a restaurant works."

The dining room, which can seat up to 75 people, is elegantly decorated with white tablecloths, flowers on every table and neatly dressed waiters.

The menu for the first week consisted of three courses: an appetizer -- either a spinach citron salad or essence of mushroom soup; an entree of either tenderloin of beef or prawn risotto; and desert, which included fresh fruit or a mango raspberry cream brulee.

"We hope to eventually have a few paintings around the room and put in a sound system," said Billie Lou Sands, chair of the consumer and families studies/ dietetics department. "It took us three years to get everything we needed for the restaurant. Eighteen companies donated $400,000 worth of food service equipment."

The restaurant is able to keep its prices so low because it's a nonprofit venture.

"The money we ask people to pay is just to cover expenses," Sands said.

To assist the students, two professionals were hired to help with the restaurant. One of those hired is Michael Higgins, who has worked 18 years as a chef in fine-dining restaurants.

"The students are involved in almost every step of the process. My job is to work with them in fine tuning the food and preparations," Higgins said. "These students are seeing what it's like to work in a professional kitchen. They are learning what it takes to put out food A to Z, seeing the entire process."

Higgins said the food is very good and people are getting a deal.

"They are getting a meal that would cost up to $25 somewhere else," he said.

Helen Finks, department secretary for hospitality management, was impressed with the quality of the food.

"Everything was excellent," Finks said after eating lunch at the Vista Room last Thursday. "The food was really good. The whole preparation was really wonderful."

The Vista Room is open for lunch every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from noon to 1 p.m. until Dec. 14. Tickets can be purchased at the consumer families department located in room 120 in the Burk Hall Annex and in the hospitality management department located in the Business building, room 314.

[ Golden Gater Online November 21, 1995 ]

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